Latest in the U of Regina Press’s Writers on Writing series is Voice: Adam Pottle on Writing with Deafness ($18.95). This relatively young writer has a collection of poetry, two novels, a play, and a film script behind him, to say nothing of his recent PhD in English, so he’s definitely got something to say about the craft of writing. That he is also deaf gives him something else to talk about, and he never shies away from that topic.

He’s from northern B.C. and was born “with what’s called sensorineural hearing loss in both ears, meaning (he lacks) certain nerves that pick up sound and transfer it to (his) brain.” In the first two-thirds of Voice he talks candidly about what it was like growing up deaf, having to make the choice among hearing aids, cochlear implants, or learning to sign. What he wanted to be, of course, was just a regular kid who looked and apprehended the world like everyone else his age. Because he couldn’t be that kid, he alternated between anger and a gradual acceptance of his condition, his deafness being “a kind of firewall protecting the contents of (his) head,” and allowing him “to retreat into (his) imagination.”

Far from what he calls the stereotypes of the Deaf and disabled community, where you’re either a glowing example like Helen Keller or someone whose life isn’t worth living, Pottle occasionally swaggers through this memoir of growing up, answering questions in an imaginary interview with a deceased heavy metal musician. “I . . . didn’t want stories that preached determination or set good examples or inspired me to overcome obstacles. I wanted characters that belched national anthems and broke windows and sang dirty songs.”

He takes that bold attitude with him into his section on the writing craft, speaking of how, on the one hand, in this noisy world he treasures silence and its gift in which to create, and how on the other hand he wants to break through the silence surrounding the way the general public responds to Deaf and disabled people. There are millions of us, he says, and we have something important to say.

Paul Hanley’s new book Man of the Trees

Longtime Saskatoon environmentalist and journalist Paul Hanley brings us Man of the Trees (U of R Press, $34.95), the story of Richard St. Barbe Baker. Who is he? you may ask. Well, here are a few facts: He was born in England in 1889, fought in the First World War, where he was hit by an artillery shell and presumed dead, but somehow lived. He worked for the British Colonial Office in Africa where he befriended the locals, started a tree planting campaign called Men of the Trees, offended his bosses and was fired. He visited just about every country in the world on tree planting missions, drove a Humber across the Sahara Desert to promote tree planting as a way to reclaim land lost to desertification, and in his 80s rode a horse from one end of New Zealand to the other, promoting tree planting and giving four lectures a day, as well as media interviews.

Oh, and he was one of the first 100 students enrolled at the U of S in Saskatoon where he made life-long friends with John Diefenbaker, and with Sam Eagleboy of what is now the Whitecap Dakota First Nation. He died here in 1982 while on a lecture tour and is buried at Woodlawn Cemetery.

Besides helping to save the California Redwoods and making inroads against deserts in the Middle East, Africa, China and South America, he had the rare gift of global and historical vision. Despite being a man of Edwardian England, he shrugged off his colonialist attitudes and realized that someone from an island in the North Atlantic could actually learn something from the Indigenous peoples of Kenya or Saskatchewan or New Zealand. He could also see that what the ancient Romans had done to Palestine — chopping down all the trees — needed to be halted in the 20th Century.

Naturally he fought every commercial enterprise going every day of his life, but he was interested in sustainability—trees, soil, and jobs in the long run, not just jobs now: no jobs, trees, or soil later. We’re still fighting that short-sightedness. But Hanley gives hope by naming just a few of the people that have taken up Baker’s cause. He was a man so far ahead of his time, he is timeless.

Wisdom in the Age of Climate Change by Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky

Finally, to a book called Learning to Die: Wisdom in the Age of Climate Change (U of R Press, $19.95), by Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky. There is so much packed into this slender volume that I’ll have to compress further. These two philosophers and poets, trained in the sciences, as well, just want to have a few words about awareness and dignity as we face an inevitable catastrophe.

Bringhurst notes that in all civilizations, whether between their “pastoral and agricultural mythologies on the one hand and hunter-gatherer mythologies on the other . . . the general emphasis . . . usually does fall, on gratitude and respect toward the natural world. Every storytelling tradition knows the unwisdom of unlimited demands.” And yet, he says, we make unlimited demands. We don’t know when enough is enough. Put simply, why own three cars when you can buy six?

Zwicky contends that what people often say about looking the facts in the eye; ie. the way we’re going leads to global meltdown, “will result in despair. . . it will quash hope and make our lives unbearable.” Get ahold of yourself and conduct yourself with self-control and dignity.

Do what you can: don’t idle your truck while you check all your notifications; pick up trash in your street; choose not to use more plastic; and don’t say, if China won’t do anything, why should I? Do your little part, and, like Richard Baker, plant a tree.